"Yesterday Egypt, today Algeria"

ALGIERS – In the wake of Friday's historic events in Cairo, over 1,000 peaceful demonstrators defied a ban on protests in Algiers on the Place de 1er Mai on Saturday.
The goal of the National Coordination Committee for Change and Democracy, the organisers of what was supposed to have been a march to Martyr's Square, was to call for an end to the 19-year state of emergency, for democratic freedoms, and for a change in Algeria's political system. Invigorated by Cairo's great event, this Saturday in Algiers they chanted slogans like "Djazair Horra Dimocratia" ("A free and democratic Algeria"), "système dégage" ("government out") and indeed,

'Yesterday Egypt, today Algeria'.

There were small echoes of Egypt. Thousands of police in full riot gear painted the square blue in their uniforms, attempting to occupy the space and prevent the demonstration, yet the protestors remained, for hours risking arrest and beatings, shouting slogans and singing effervescently. A large group of young men, with the obvious cooperation of the police, entered the scene violently, chanting in favour of President Bouteflika (in power since 1999) and attempting to provoke fights with the protestors. (This was so reminiscent of Cairo, that for a moment, one half-expected a charge of men riding camels like in Tahrir Square.) At one point, these youths rushed the bench where I stood taking photographs with journalists, and we all toppled to the ground. Later, the pro-government provocateurs started throwing large stones.
The single most moving part of the day was the women's demonstration. A group of about 50 of the many women present – a few young women in hijab, many other young women in jeans, older, seasoned feminist activists wearing khaffiyehs and dresses – took up position next to the bus station at 1st of May Square holding a large Algerian flag. (credit for Reuters/Zohra Bensemra photo above)

One of these women, prominent psychologist Cherifa Bouatta (below right), told me on Friday as we watched the celebration in Cairo:

'I have been waiting for this for years. This is the beginning. From the years of terrorism [the 1990s] and what came after, everything seemed lost. Our hopes for a just society were dying. But now the possibilities are fantastic.'

On Saturday in 1st of May Square, she and the other women explored those possibilities. They occupied the street; they called for profound political change; they ululated (what Algerians call "pousser les youyous"; a high-pitched glottal chanting); they sang "Kassaman", the national anthem, and "Listiqlal" (independence), a song of the anti-colonial movement that freed the country from French rule in 1962 at the cost of a million martyrs. Most importantly, they refused to cede to the police. The pro-Boutef youth repeatedly confronted them, and even began shouting in favour of an Islamic state at one point as a confused riposte to the women.
The most surreal moment came as I watched the unyielding female activists attacked by a group of young policewomen in pants and boots – their own career paths only imaginable thanks to the hard work of some of the very women activists they hit and shoved. A young policewoman, the age of one of the students I teach, slapped me for taking a picture as this occurred. The women protesters' only "crime" had been to stand peacefully on the sidewalk of their own capital city singing the national anthem and calling for democracy.
Reportedly, as many as 350 were arrested during the day. Many were roughed up, including the prominent, 90-year-old lawyer Ali Yahia Abdennour, who is the honorary president of the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights (LADDH). Cherifa Khaddar, the redoubtable human rights activist and president of Djazairouna, an association of the victims of the fundamentalist terrorism of the 1990s, whose brother and sister were brutally murdered in 1996 by the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), was arrested twice. I watched in horror as policewomen manhandled her – unfortunately, not an oxymoron.
Just before she was arrested the first time, Khaddar (left; credit) was attacked by a group of the young pro-government "protesters", some of whom attempted to pull her clothes off while another attempted to simulate sex with her. A policewoman dragged her away from this melee, only to help a group of male cops throw her to the ground and arrest her, rather than the perpetrators. Later on, at the police station, she found herself in a cell with 20 other women. Together, they continued the protest, chanting and singing:

'My brothers do not forget our martyrs. They are calling you from their tombs. Listen to their voices, you free ones.'

The police became enraged and attacked the women in the cell, dragging one away by her hair. Khaddar was later released.

The situation is fluid. As the protest waned, the square was taken over by a large group of mostly young male protesters, many from the surrounding neighbourhood. Some of them had previously chanted pro-government slogans and insulted the women demonstrators, but now took up anti-government slogans themselves, talked supportively with the freed Khaddar and challenged the police alone. Hundreds of riot police then brought out their guns, marched in formation and shut down the square altogether. It looked like a scene out of the Costa Gavras film "Z".
I hope that what happens in Algeria in the coming period will be watched carefully, notwithstanding the understandable preoccupation with events to the east in Egypt. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts.) The contexts are different, but the struggles are the same. Moreover, the brave Algerian activists of 1st of May Square – women and men, young and old – also deserve solidarity and support on the road ahead. Algerian writer and journalist Mustapha Benfodil said that this demonstration's goal was to turn 1st of May Square into an Algerian Tahrir Square, and that what occurred on Saturday was a very important step in that direction. But he noted that much work remains to be done to that end.
Clearly, the wall of fear needs to be broken down here – perhaps a harder task than elsewhere, given the terrible violence of the 1990s that killed as many as 200,000 people and terrorised the entire society. The opposition needs to be united and organised. Additionally, activists need to build critical links with broader segments of the society to achieve the political change so clearly needed in the country and which the police overreaction only underscored – change that Tunisia and Egypt have proven to be entirely possible.
For now, perhaps it is more accurate to say,

'Yesterday Egypt, tomorrow Algeria …'

(Cross-posted at the Guardian)

Kudos to Colette Rausch

Happy to report that our colleague, Colette Rausch (left), has just been named Director of the Rule of Law Center of Innovation at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C.
I had the pleasure of working with Colette early in her 8-year career at the Institute -- I was among the hundreds of experts on the Model Codes for Post-Conflict Criminal Justice project for which she was a principal coordinator. Undertaken by the Institute of Peace undertook in tandem with the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland Galway, the project involved meetings across the globe. The aim, as posted, was to draft a Model Criminal Code, Model Code of Criminal Procedure, Model Detention Act, and a Model Police Powers Act. They're intended to be made available for use in postconflict and peacekeeping settings. Consequently Colette, along with Vivienne O'Connor, has coedited Model Codes vol. I, published in 2007, and Model Codes vol. II, published in 2008. Additional volumes are contemplated.
These are just 2 of the many and varied publications that Colette's produced; another is her book Combating Serious Crimes in Post-Conflict Societies (2006).
Focusing on criminal justice and police reform, Colette also has worked at the Institute on projects to foster discussion between civil society and security forces in countries like Nepal, Iraq, Haiti, and Afghanistan.
Before joining the Institute she was, inter alia: Director of the Department of Human Rights and Rule of Law at the Kosovo mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe; resident legal adviser for the U.S. Department of Justice in Hungary and Bosnia; and an attorney in offices of the state attorney general, federal prosecutor, and federal public defender in Nevada.
Colette earned her B.A. degree from the University of Nevada, Reno, and her J.D. degree from Santa Clara University School of Law in California.

Heartfelt congratulations!

On August 11

On this day in ...
... 1965 (45 years ago today), in the "deeply impoverished African American neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles" known as Watts, "the largest and costliest urban rebellion of the Civil Rights era" began when a white patrol officer arrested an African-American man on suspicion of driving while intoxicated, and violence erupted between onlookers and police. Just a day into the turmoil The New York Times reported: "Officials called it the worst racial incident in the city's history." Rioting went on for 6 days (photo credit), prompting the mobilization of 14,000 National Guard troops and imposition of a curfew over a 45-mile area. In the end, 34 persons were dead, 1,000 persons were injured, nearly 4,000 persons had been arrested, and more than $40 million worth of property was damaged. According to the Civil Rights Digital Library:

Throughout the crisis, public officials advanced the argument that the riot was the work outside agitators; however, an official investigation, prompted by Governor Pat Brown, found that the riot was a result of the Watts community's longstanding grievances and growing discontentment with high unemployment rates, substandard housing, and inadequate schools. ... [F]ollowing the riot, city leaders and state officials failed to implement measures to improve the social and economic conditions of African Americans living in the Watts neighborhood.

(Prior August 11 posts are here, here, and here.)

Policing housemaids in Bahrain

(My thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post on my article published at 49 British Journal of Criminology 165 (2009))

Foreigners working as housemaids in Bahrain continue to face a Catch-22, as I've described in my recent article, Policing Housemaids: The Criminalization of Domestic Workers in Bahrain.

Using ethnographic and interview methodologies, I explored cultural perceptions of work and family which factor into how Bahraini labor law fails to include housemaids in its provisions. I also observed how the police by default end up regulating labor, thereby contributing to a criminalization effect. In essence, the absence of labor protections created a decentering and diffusing of legal forms and practices across agencies. In this case, what should be handled by the Ministry of Labor in reality becomes the responsibility of the national police force (logo above left).

By way of background:
Unlike other guest workers, housemaids -- and ‘houseboys ’ , who exist, but are far fewer in number -- are not protected under Bahraini labor law. Article 2 of The Labor Law for the Private Sector (Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs 1976) lists ‘domestic servants and persons regarded as such ’ as exceptions to protections afforded other foreign workers. By default, domestic servants are treated as part of the family for which they work; however, their cases are never processed in the shari’ah courts, where all other family-related matters are litigated.

Because there is no oversight over work conditions, the housemaids serve at the whim of their employers, who also act as their immigration sponsors. Although there are many sponsors who treat their housemaids with respect and care, numerous incidents have been documented in recent years of exploitation and abuse, ranging from physical punishments for allegedly doing the job poorly, to sexual abuse and rape by male members of households.

At the same time, many problematic housemaid-sponsor relationships do not rise to the level of abuse or exploitation, but rather reflect more mundane workplace employee-employer conflicts.

Regardless of the seriousness of the problem, the women’s section of the police station is the default government forum for sponsors’ passionate re-telling of how they have been wronged by their housemaids and the housemaids’ subsequent emotional rebuttal, laced with their fear of a criminal justice system they may not necessarily understand. Disputes quickly rise to the level of a criminal investigation as accusations of theft, assault and other criminal behavior on the part of the housemaid are alleged to the police.

My work on housemaids occurred as part of my research into gender policies in Bahraini policing during which I observed the female section of Bahrain’s police stations for several months during the years 2005 and 2006. Housemaids or former housemaids formed the majority of female defendants whom I observed at local police stations.

Guest Blogger: Jacqueline Ross

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Jacqueline Ross (left) as today's guest blogger.
Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, Urbana-Champaign, Jacqueline is an internationally noted comparatist in the fields of evidence and criminal law and procedure. Her scholarship -- published in journals in the United States and elsewhere -- includes "Impediments to Transnational Cooperation in Undercover Operations: A Comparative Study of the United States and Italy," 52 American Journal of Comparative Law 569 (2004), winner of the Edward Wise Senior Scholar Prize from the American Society of Comparative Law for best article in comparative criminal procedure.
Jacqueline's a co-founder and co-director of the Michigan-Illinois-Princeton Workshop on Comparative Law Works in Progress, and also the co-organizer of a seminar series on Transnational Intelligence and Policing in Immigrant Communities that alternates between Institut D'Études Politiques de Paris and the University of Illinois College of Law. Her research projects include comparative studies of undercover policing in the United States, Italy, Germany, and France; and of policing in the immigrant communities of the United States and France, for which she's received a Fulbright Research Fellowship and a grant from France's Agence Nationale de Recherche.
An honors graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, Jacqueline clerked for Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, then practiced as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Chicago and Boston before entering academia.
In her guest post below, Jacqueline applies comparative analysis to undercut the claim, made by many a common law expert, that evidence admitted in civil law trials without any form of prior screening.
Heartfelt welcome!

Deception, interrogation & evidence

(My thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post on an article I published at 28 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 443 (2008), downloadable by subscription at the hyperlinked site; earlier, bepress.com version available here)

In my recent article, Do Rules of Evidence Apply (Only) in the Courtroom? Deceptive Interrogation in the United States and Germany, I challenged the commonly held view that civil law legal systems such as Germany do not employ formal rules of evidence comparable to those that govern American courtrooms.

Civil law systems, which commit factfinding to mixed panels of lay and professional judges, are said to have less need for formal rules of evidence that withhold information from decisionmakers. In my article, I argued that scholars have failed to recognize that evidentiary rules can restrict not only the presentation of of evidence at trial, but also the manner of its acquisition during the pretrial investigation. For this reason, existing scholarship overlooks a rich source of German evidentiary norms designed to shore up a German prohibition against deceptive interrogation. (By contrast, of course, the United States permits the police to obtain confessions through investigative lies.)

I argue that German regulation of police interrogation -- particularly its prohibition of deceptive stratagems -- plays an important role in shaping the factual record on which the legal systems assess guilt or innocence. The article identifies a number of institutional factors on which this system of pre-trial evidentiary regulation depends:

► the existence of a case file documenting all investigative acts;

► the accessibility of this case file to defense counsel and judges;

► the fact that information obtained during investigations becomes evidence as soon as it is acquired, rather than when it is presented at trial;

► verbatim transcriptions of all interrogation questions and answers, allowing prohibited investigation methods to become known;

► a more neutral investigative role assigned to police and prosecutors, who must investigate exculpatory as well as inculpatory circumstances;the requirement that convictions be justified in writing, so that appellate judges may more easily determine whether trial judges relied on confessions that should have been suppressed; and

► the fact that German evidentiary regulation centers at least as much if not more on the investigative process than on trial procedure.

(Credit for photo of German courtroom. An earlier IntLawGrrls post, challenging another assumption about civil law systems, is here.)